And so he too set to work to remove the jaguar skin, for it would make a pretty decent rug, if it could be properly preserved.

A JAGUAR-HUNT ON THE TAQUARY

Besides our own two dogs, neither of which was used to jaguar-hunting, there were the ranch dogs, which were well-nigh worthless, and then two jaguar hounds borrowed for the occasion from a ranch six or eight leagues distant.

We soon found that the dogs would not by themselves follow the jaguar trail; nor would the camaradas, although they carried spears.

On another side of the quadrangle stood another long, low white building with a red-tiled roof; this held the kitchen and the living-rooms of the upper-grade peons, the headmen, the cook, and jaguar-hunters, with their families: dark-skinned men, their wives showing varied strains of white, Indian, and negro blood.

They were, of course, chosen from among the men who were hunters, and each carried his long, rather heavy and clumsy jaguar-spear.

At last, on the edge of a patch of jungle, in wet ground, we came on fresh jaguar tracks.

With him the conversation ranged from jaguar-hunting and the perils of exploration in the "Matto Grosso," the great wilderness, to Indian anthropology, to the dangers of a purely materialistic industrial civilization, and to Positivist morality.

Nearing Rheims we turned into a splendid straight highway bordered by trees, where the late afternoon sunlight filtered through the dead leaves, which still hung from the boughs and dappled the yellow road with black splotches, until it made you think of jaguar pelts.

One morning he saw a jaguar jump on the back of a huge turtle, and begin to paw at its neck.